Hard disk drives are the primary computer storage device in most computing systems. Maintaining a hard disk drive's proper working environment is critical for preventing a hard disk drive from failing. For example, excessive vibration during hard disk drive operation can cause the read/write head to contact the magnetic disk, scratching the disk surface and damaging the hard disk drive. In addition, sudden changes in temperature and humidity may cause condensation inside the hard disk drive. The condensation may cause the read/write head to adhere to the surface of the disk and prevent the disk from rotating.
Even under optimal conditions, hard disk drives may eventually fail. It is usually simply a question of when the hard disk drive will fail and what impact the failure will have on the computing environment in which the hard disk drive is operating. To minimize loss of data in case of hard disk drive failure, the data on a hard disk drive may be copied or “backed up” to other computer storage media. Generally, businesses and large computer networks have established procedures for copying data from their hard disk drives to a separate storage medium on a periodic basis. Consequently, when a hard disk drive is working correctly and data is copied periodically, a computer or network may spend valuable time copying data from a hard disk drive unnecessarily. Moreover, many individuals and small networks do not make copies of the data on their hard disk drives on a regular basis, if at all. If the hard disk drive data has not been copied for a long period of time prior to a hard disk drive failure, the computer or network may lose valuable data. Restoring or recreating lost data may be expensive, time-consuming and, depending upon the nature of the data, potentially devastating to an individual or business.
As hard disk drives have increased in recording density and data output rate, hard disk drive manufacturers have also increased the sophistication of the hard disk drive to increase performance and mean time between failures. Hard disk drives may include environmental sensors such as temperature, vibration, G-force sensors and the like. Hard disk drives may also detect and track hard disk drive performance including the error rate and the frequency with which the hard disk drive is powered on and off. An error rate, as used herein, is the ratio of the number of occurrences of erroneous data to the total number of units of data. A high error rate for a hard disk drive may indicate a problem with the read/write heads or damage to the magnetic medium. An increase in the error rate may indicate imminent hard disk drive failure.
Current hard disk drives have a limited mechanism to provide performance and configuration information to a host operating system. This is based at least in part upon the fact that hard disk drives are often associated with proprietary data packaging techniques, and manufacturers of hard disk drives do not wish to enable bi-directional communications to occur between hard disk drives and operating systems (for fear of reverse engineering of data packing techniques). Thus, today, hard disk drives receive commands for data from an operating system (e.g., through user-initiated commands) and accommodate such request by packaging data in a format that can be interpreted by the operating system. Today's hard disk drives do not provide information to an operating system without solicitation, as existing hard disk drive interface protocols such as the small computer system interface (SCSI), serial attached SCSI (SAS), parallel ATA (PATA) or serial ATA (SATA) fail to provide a method for communicating hard disk drive environment and performance conditions to an operating system. Currently, if a harmful condition occurs in the hard disk drive system, the hard disk drive has no way of informing the operating system of the harmful condition. Consequently, the operating system has almost no information regarding the performance conditions within the hard disk drive and no way to prevent hard disk drive failure when failure is imminent. As a result, an operating system will treat a hard disk drive as operating normally until the hard disk drive fails. The operating system is unable to act to correct the harmful condition, to mitigate possible damage and minimize the data loss or to alert users of the potential failure.
Current hard disk drives may collect error information for analysis in a post mortem fashion, but are unable to communicate such information (and performance information) to the host operating system. For example, a hard disk drive may have a temperature sensor indicating an abnormally high temperature, but be unable to react to the high temperature.